Hello and welcome to Business Daily with me, Frey Lindsay. Kidnapping is a national nightmare in Nigeria.

We've seen this in recent weeks with the abduction of hundreds of school children in the

northwest, with many of those children still in captivity. But today we're going to dig into the

economics of kidnapping in Nigeria, how soaring inflation and financial deprivation

around the country are driving ransom demands higher and higher.

He took the phone, this guy, said 20 million, and I said to him, if I had 20 million, you

wouldn't find my daughter to kidnap. She'll be flying to the nearest airport.

And we're also going to look at

how one group of people in Nigeria, university graduates, face a unique set of circumstances that

makes them vulnerable to kidnapping. The good thing about the NYC demographic from a kidnapper standpoint,

they're really a captive market right for these kidnappers. That's all coming up here on Business

Daily on the BBC World Service. The Nigerian National Youth Service Corps, or

NYSC, is a one-year national service program that's mandatory for university graduates in

Nigeria. The program was initially set up in the early

1970s in the wake of the Nigerian Civil War. Its purpose was to foster unity, to connect

the hundreds of different ethnic groups and communities across the vast country. Typically,

NYSC corpers, as they're known, will spend most of the year working in schools, hospitals,

or in infrastructure development. They get paid a little bit for their service, about 30,000 Naira or 20 US dollars per

month. But really, it's meant to be about building young, model Nigerian citizens and getting

them ready for the job market. For many, the NYSC is a positive experience, the first step

towards a successful career and a way to make lifelong friends and memories.

Here are some testimonials from the NYSC Facebook page.

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